Product Overview
Investigator Yashim travels to Venice in the latest installment of the Edgar Awardwinning author Jason Goodwins captivating series
Jason Goodwins first Yashim mystery, The Janissary Tree, brought home the Edgar Award for Best Novel. His follow-up, The Snake Stone, more than lived up to expectations and was hailed by Marilyn Stasio in The New York Times Book Review as a magic carpet ride to the most exotic place on earth. Now, in The Bellini Card, Jason Goodwin takes us back into his intelligent, gorgeous and evocative (The Independent on Sunday) world, as dazzling as a hall of mirrors and utterly compelling.
Istanbul, 1840: the new sultan, Abdlmecid, has heard a rumor that Bellinis vanished masterpiece, a portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror, may have resurfaced in Venice. Yashim, our eunuch detective, is promptly asked to investigate, butaware that the sultans advisers are against any extravagant repurchase of the painting decides to deploy his disempowered Polish ambassador friend, Palewski, to visit Venice in his stead. Palewski arrives in disguise in down-and-out Venice, where a killer is at large as dealers, faded aristocrats, and other unknown factions seek to uncover the whereabouts of the missing Bellini.
But is it the Bellini itself that endangers all, or something associated with its original loss? And why is it that all the killers victims are somehow tied to the alluring Contessa dAspi dIstria? Will the Austrians unmask Palewski, or will the killer find him first? Only Yashim can uncover the truth behind the manifold mysteries.
